Grave Importance

by Vivian Shaw

  Greta was only vaguely aware she was falling asleep.

  She woke out of complicated dreams to find herself still surrounded by books, and wasn’t at all sure for a moment where she was; then it came back, and she glanced sharply over at the clock on the nightstand, enormously relieved to find she hadn’t overslept.

  Nor had she come up with any solutions. At times in her life Greta had managed to fall asleep thinking about a problem and found herself waking up with the edges of an answer; not this time. She got out of bed, stacking the books neatly on the nightstand, and decided she’d skip breakfast in favor of information. It was definitely time for her to meet Oasis Natrun’s records clerk.

  Tefnakhte was among the most well-preserved mummies Greta had ever seen. He’d had his hands replaced at least once, and probably more than once judging by the deftness of his fingers, and his wrappings were exceedingly neat and even in color. He shook her hand, his grip firm and confident, offered her a seat. The office was also exceedingly neat, all his filing cabinets and bookcases presenting an air of methodical organization; the computer on his desk was a sleek iMac that couldn’t be more than six months old.

  “We keep up with technology,” he said. He had clearly been unearthed by one of the British expeditions, judging by the accent. “When I first came here, we were still hard-copy-only, which as you can imagine dates me rather.”

  Greta laughed. “Twenty-first Dynasty? Your wrappings are in beautiful condition. How long has the spa been around, anyway? I hadn’t realized it was quite so wealthy, either; the helicopter was a surprise.”

  “It was established in the early thirties,” Tefnakhte said. “By a very wealthy gentleman who had fallen in love with Egypt and Egyptology, and built the original facility farther down the mountain; that building is still in use today as a boutique hotel for humans, as a matter of fact. He set up a private foundation and left his fortune to it as an endowment, which has been funding us ever since, and we’ve had several other extraordinarily generous donors over the years. The current facility dates to the mid-sixties.”

  “I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know any of that,” Greta said, smiling. “Some expert I am. But it’s an amazing place, and I’m so glad to be here. You’re not just in charge of the records, though, right?”

  “I also do the recitations,” he said, a little self-conscious. “During procedures, and so on. It’s helpful to have the spells pronounced correctly, and, well, that’s difficult if you’ve never been fluent in Egyptian.”

  “It is incredibly difficult,” said Greta, “which is why I don’t do it at home; I have a witch friend do the chanting for me, but that’s a far cry from having it done by an actual Egyptian priest. I’m looking forward to having you help me with Maanakhtef and Nefrina this week.”

  “You are operating on Maanakhtef, then,” said Tefnakhte. “Dr. Kamal was hesitant about the surgery, I think?”

  “So I gather, but I’m at least going to prepare the cuneiform bones and the articular surfaces of his metatarsophalangeal joints to receive the new bone and tendon replacements,” said Greta, and then had to laugh at herself. “Sorry. Haven’t had my coffee yet. I mean I’m just going to—”

  “I know,” said Tefnakhte, and she could hear the faint creak as he smiled behind the bandages. “Trust me, I’ve spent enough time watching and then writing down the names of the procedures; I’ve looked up almost every bone in the body, one way or another.”

  Greta could feel her face go pink. “Ah,” she said. “Of course. I did want to ask you something in particular, though, about the procedures you’ve participated in since this idiopathic transient vertigo thing showed up.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Let me guess: you want to know if I’ve done magic on them, and if so, what magic it is that I’ve done?”

  She wasn’t used to being so neatly and completely understood. Particularly by someone whose area of expertise was nominally quite a long way off from her own; then she remembered Sister Brigitte telling her that Tefnakhte had been a priest of Thoth, and a little of his detail-oriented sharpness made more sense. The ibis-headed scribe-god had always appealed to Greta as a thoroughly sensible deity.

  “Well, yes,” she said. “In fact. I wanted to ask about the spells you’ve done and what they’re for and if you’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary during the spell-casting—can you feel it if something’s gone awry with the magic?”

  “To an extent,” he said, “but no, in fact, there doesn’t seem to be a correlation. There have been”—he paused for a moment, head tilted, accessing some inner memory bank—“fourteen patients who have experienced it to date. Of that number, nine have been here to undergo a medical procedure; of those nine, I’ve been present and active for six. Some of them have been very simple cases which didn’t require any chanting or amulet replacement.”

  “So some of the guests who’ve had an episode have never even met you?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “And the other patients we’ve had come through the facility, who haven’t ever experienced the attacks, I’ve been involved in approximately two thirds of their care. There’s no pattern I can discern, and patterns are among the things I’m good at.”

  “And you didn’t notice anything different magically about the ones you did see who had attacks?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Tefnakhte. He sounded genuinely regretful, and Greta thought she understood: it would have been so much neater to have found an explanation, a thread to tie the instances together, because then perhaps something could be done about it.

  It wasn’t lost on her that this mummy was very specifically worried about the attacks. That he was taking it seriously, whatever it was, and minded not knowing the answers. She could sympathize.

  “Have you ever been present when it happened?”

  “Once,” he said. “It was a little alarming, actually. The patient just sort of suddenly collapsed, and it was a good thing she wasn’t standing up; she’d have shattered on the floor.”

  Greta winced. “And we can hardly require every guest to spend their entire stay lying flat on their backs lest they suddenly have one of these spells and injure themselves in a fall,” she said. “This is—a problem, isn’t it.”

  “I’m afraid so, Doctor,” said Tefnakhte. “Dr. Kamal said before he left that he wouldn’t trust any other physician with the spa. I think that goes for this mystery as well.”

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time they’d got back to the hotel that afternoon, Ruthven felt absolutely fine; the entire strange little episode on the Spanish Steps had receded into nothing more than a passing memory. He and Grisaille had gone out that night as they had done every night, and while he had certainly indulged in excesses, he hadn’t indulged excessively in them, so waking up with a splitting headache to find that the room’s light hurt his eyes seemed to Ruthven completely unfair.

  He’d had a bad reaction to someone a few times in his memory—some vagary of blood chemistry or pharmaceuticals—but he couldn’t remember drinking from anybody last night who looked suspicious. The pain felt like an iron band around his temples, squeezing.

  “There you are,” said Grisaille nearby. Ruthven opened his eyes again, shut them against the brightness of the room. “I was wondering if you’d ever wake up—what’s wrong?”

  Concern had rapidly displaced the mild amusement in his tone. “Ruthven, what is it, what’s the matter?”

  “Headache,” said Ruthven between his teeth. “Can I have—lots of drugs, please?”

  “Oh,” said Grisaille, “yes of course, just a minute,” and Ruthven heard him moving around; abruptly the overhead light went away, and that was so much of a relief. He could open his eyes; it hurt, but he could handle it, and when Grisaille came back with a handful of painkillers, Ruthven was able to smile at him.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “I get these sometimes. Thank you,” and he dry-swallowed the handful of drugs with a wince. “What time is it?�
��

  “Late afternoon. You’ve been sleeping all day,” Grisaille said, still concerned. “I thought you’d probably just had a bit much and needed to sleep it off.”

  “Apparently I did,” said Ruthven, closing his eyes again. “Embarrassing old age, you know.”

  “Oh, hush,” said Grisaille. “Do you want anything else?”

  “Not right now,” he said, willing the stuff to start working. “Sorry, I’m not terribly entertaining at the moment.”

  “You don’t have to be entertaining,” Grisaille said, “you have to be you, that’s all, and—should I go away?”

  Ruthven realized Grisaille had never actually seen him having one of his infrequent but dramatic headaches; they had only had about six months to learn about each other’s faults and foibles. Nor was he himself used to the idea of anyone saying things to him like you have to be you, that’s all; despite the pain, it was remarkably pleasant to be the object of that kind of plain and simple appreciation. That care.

  “No,” he said, “don’t go away, please, it’s all right, I’ll be fine once this starts to work, I just can’t be very conversational.”

  “You don’t have to be,” said Grisaille again, and took his hand; cool, smooth fingers. “You just rest, okay? I’m right here.”

  He smiled, and curled his fingers around Grisaille’s, and let himself drift, feeling the edges of the pain already beginning to recede.

  Tefnakhte had said that the spa was originally founded by a wealthy Egyptophile who wanted to do something more useful with his fortune than leave it to some distant cousin, and clearly philanthropic support continued to be generous. Greta made a mental note to go and see the original 1930s building when she got a chance, but right now she was a little busy being staggered by how much money the place must be bringing in. Not only did they have a spiral CT scanner and a wide-bore MRI, the clinic was also equipped with a fairly new Varian radiotherapy linac setup, which Greta knew for a fact started around six hundred thousand pounds and went up from there. She’d known Oasis Natrun had the capability to provide sterilizing irradiation therapy, but she’d been picturing something a little less impressive.

  All her worries weren’t exactly forgotten, looking through the windows of the treatment room at the machine, but there was a certain sense of childish glee nonetheless.

  She made herself stop staring; she had work to do. Preparing Maanakhtef’s foot for the installation of the new phalanges wouldn’t be difficult, but it required concentration. This wasn’t a job for the full operating theater; she’d be using the smaller of their procedure rooms, equipped with a high-end dental operatory chair. That dental equipment was widely used in the field of mummy medicine had made sense to Greta from the beginning: what else was there that offered all the tools you’d need for delicately reshaping and repairing bone, after all?

  When she got there, masked and gloved, Maanakhtef was already reclining in the chair with a blanket over him, and the nurse had set classical music quietly playing in the background. She smiled down at him. “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, quite well in myself, Doctor. Tefnakhte’s been to see me and said some spells for the pain.”

  “Good. This will take about twenty minutes, start to finish, and you shouldn’t have too much discomfort while I’m working, but if you do, tell me, and we’ll get Tefnakhte back again.” She nodded to the nurse, who was measuring out two-part epoxy resin into small beakers on the counter. “I’ll want that mixed in about ten.”

  Maanakhtef creaked as he turned his head to peer at the beakers. “What’s that?”

  Greta settled on the stool by his foot and put on her magnifying glasses, examining the exposed bone surfaces. Good: not too much reshaping was necessary, just smoothing down the edges. “Stabilizing resin,” she told him, “it’ll strengthen your bones a bit and fill in the damaged surfaces. I’ve got all sorts of resins for all sorts of purposes, a little like the embalmers did, only I bet they didn’t have mystic ancient dual-cure inlay cement.”

  She took down the drill handpiece and fitted the burr she wanted into it, and set to work. The sound of the drill was unavoidably a little upsetting to some people, but this one was quite quiet, a faint high-pitched whine. Maanakhtef was holding very still for her.

  “That’s a strange sensation,” he said, sounding interested rather than distressed. “The vibration. I’ve never had it done before.”

  “In the old days we’d use a hand file,” said Greta, carefully adjusting the curve of a bone’s edge. “This is faster. I have to say I’ve rarely had the opportunity to work with equipment as advanced as this clinic’s; it’s a genuine pleasure.”

  “It does seem very advanced,” he said. The German accent was incongruous coming from a mummy, but then again so was Tefnakhte’s British version. “I’ve been inside several machines, which I understand is necessary to make new bones for me?”

  “That’s right; they had to scan both your feet to determine the shapes and sizes the new bones have to be. The machines take a great many pictures of you very quickly, and a computer sticks them together into a single composite image.” She straightened up, turning off the drill. “Can I have that resin, please?—It’s all very top-of-the-line equipment.”

  The nurse had the two-part epoxy mixed and ready, having watched Greta work and determined when she’d be likely to need it. Greta smiled behind her mask. “Thanks. Mr. Maanakhtef, this will feel quite warm for a minute or two; that’s completely normal and will pass. How are you holding up?”

  “Oh, fine, fine,” he said, waving a hand. A few scraps of linen drifted to the floor; the cleaning staff were kept busy sweeping several times a day.

  Greta nodded and began to paint the resin carefully over the articular surfaces of the bones she’d prepared. It would take about four hours to cure completely, at which point the impregnated bone would be much stronger and up to the task of forming a working joint. She paid particular attention to the one remaining metatarsal, which would have to take less strain when the new bones were put in but which looked extremely fragile nonetheless.

  “I was chatting with Mr. Nesperennub in the sun lounge,” Maanakhtef continued. “He said they’d done magic on him, which they don’t, do they?”

  “Only the kind Tefnakhte does, spells to enchant amulets and keep people safe during operations,” said Greta, “and that’s a quite different sort of power. Arthur C. Clarke once said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and, well, I can see why Mr. Nesperennub might have gotten that impression. Back in the early days we’d have had to put him in a shielded room with a highly radioactive source for hours to knock out a fungal infection like that; with the linac it’d take—oh, thirty minutes, I should think, for whole-body irradiation, and you don’t have to have bits of cobalt-60 sitting around the place being dangerous radiological accidents waiting to happen.” She began to add a second coat to the remaining metatarsal. “When Ramses the Great had to go to Paris for treatment for the same condition, back in ’76 or ’77, I think he had to spend twelve hours in the chamber, poor king. It must have been unbelievably boring.”

  “I had no idea you could get rid of fungus without having to unwrap yourself completely,” said Maanakhtef. “He seemed quite all right to me, if a little weak and tired, there was no… er… visible mildew.”

  “Oh, it works at once,” she said. “The infection is knocked out immediately—along with any other form of life on or in the patient; they’re completely sterilized. It takes a little while for them to get their strength back, but the cure is complete. It’s extremely satisfying as a clinician. There,” she added, sitting back and handing the resin beaker and the brush to the nurse. “That’s done; it will take several minutes to dry and four hours to harden, and we can go ahead with the surgery tomorrow if all goes well. I’ve had a look at the bones they printed for you; they look beautiful.”

  His wrappings covered his mouth, but she could hear the crea
k as he smiled—and hear it in his voice as well.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “I shall look forward to having beautiful bones.”

  “Beautiful and functional,” Greta said, grinning, and stripped off her gloves. She loved her job; she would never have been able to do it if she didn’t. But sometimes—like now—she loved it very much.

  The library at Dark Heart House looked out over the ornamental lake. It was looking a little less like an ornamental inland sea, Varney thought, now that the rain had finally backed off slightly; he could see all the way across the valley to the woods crowning the hill on the other side of his park, and even make out that the foliage had begun to turn. All the forecasts were tentatively hopeful about the idea of it not actually continuing to rain for the remainder of ever, but Varney had his doubts. It really did seem slightly sinister.

  It was, however, pleasant to stand here in the warmth and light and comfort of his library, surrounded by books old and new, books read and unread, a room lined with words, and feel himself more a person of this world than he had done in a long time, possibly due to having recently and briefly left it. The familiarity of the things that were his, and that were understandable and reliable and real, was comforting.

  The journey to Hell and back had been an interesting experience, and one he did not immediately care to repeat, but it had borne fruit nonetheless. In his pocket lay a small velvet box that felt much heavier than it ought to have been, given its diminutive size.

  He’d come back very early in the morning to find Emily in the stables dealing with what appeared to be an outbreak of respiratory illness in the hairmonsters, and had helped her move the worst sufferers into the warmth and shelter of the house, without mentioning where he’d been; any questions had been driven out of both their minds by the unexpected discovery of a nest of very small screaming skulls in the breakfast-room wainscoting—they weren’t uncommon in old houses, but Varney hadn’t known Dark Heart had them—and in fact, both of them had been kept quite busy until late afternoon. Now, finally free to reflect on matters, he slipped his hand into his pocket and touched the velvet surface of the box. Was it the same kind of velvet a mortal jeweler’s shop might use to wrap its boxes? Did the filaments of the fabric come from a subtly different source?